Edit: I'm not updating this list anymore since I can now add species to the game directly.

Ok, i haven't gone through them all, but here's my personal list of the most interesting and well-developed alien concepts in this subforum. I don't especially expect anyone to agree with me, but this may serve as a useful summary.

In general, i highly rate those which have an interesting description that makes me feel i know the creatures, and how they would act as a FO empire. Those races that feel like an undifferentiated sci-fi stereotype, or simply provide no information are rated lower.

Please feel free to add a note in this thread if one of the species on this list has been significantly changed since it was added to the list. The list isn't updated frequently, but it is something i've had a continuing interest in for several years now.

The Chato'matou'Gormoshk: — Sessile crystalline entities which combine with the animal Gormoshk for movement an interaction with the world.Physiology: Creative (symbiotic)History/Psychology: CreativeGameplay Effects: Significant (overcomplex?)

Scylior: — Aquatic Nautiloid with three large tentacles, blindly following a religion of knowledge gathering given to them by an immobile sentient brain-growth.Physiology: CreativeHistory/Psychology: ElaborateGameplay Effects: Reasonable

Simulacrons: — Beings that are born biologically, but on maturity are translated to their true digital civilization.Physiology: Creative (biological to digital metamorphosis)History/Psychology: OKGameplay Effects: Significant

Enishe: — Star-dwelling energy beings. Alter the output of the stars they imhabit. Probably these will work better as space monsters than playable racesPhysiology: OKHistory/Psychology: OKGameplay Effects: Problematic as Playable species.

He he, I gave you the bare minimum of info for the Iskarn based on a really early draft.

Well, I've heavily revamped the entire Iskarn idea while working out some crude 3D models for them.

That's why i called the ones that didn't impress me "Underdeveloped", because i don't presume to say that with more thought and work any of these ideas couldn't become much more complete and compelling.But "humanoid" is still a big detraction in my book.

That's why i called the ones that didn't impress me "Underdeveloped", because i don't presume to say that with more thought and work any of these ideas couldn't become much more complete and compelling.But "humanoid" is still a big detraction in my book.

I've put a few suprises in the new description.

_________________A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down. --Murphy's war laws

First, I salute to your efforts in reading through the race descriptions, eleazar. They are massive amounts of text.

I've thought a bit about how this will be implemented to FO. Of course, it will be a long time until the races will be considered for design, but wanted to prematurely discuss anyhow. No harm in discussing, right?

First, I think there must be a set number of main, preset races for FO. These races will be fully fleshed out in terms of art and given major story treatments. Having a reasonable number for preset races is IMHO the key to managing the workload.

What should be that number? I say the same number there is for Environmental Preferences, which is 9. This way, each preset race will have a unique most-favored EP. Assuming we want to have humans in the mix, this leaves 8.

As a next step, when we do reach the phase to determine the races, we can proceed to assign 8 other alien species (based on their physiology descriptions only) to each EP. The easiest example is a fish race for Ocean planet. I expect there will be continuous addition of race descriptions in this board, and we can choose the coolest fish race up to that day for the honor.

Then, we can proceed to assign "picks" to each preset race. Here, I propose that we all abandon pride of authorship and leave social/historical/psychological picks open for any race. That means we will ignore the original race description submitted with respect to the preset race. There is really no specific reason why these non-physiological picks would be relevant to certain species (except, of course, when such traits are in fact intertwined with physiological traits). There could be a cowardly rock alien just as much as a cowardly sheeplike alien. I think we would like well-balanced preset races more than imbalanced races that are true to the creater's vision. Rather than being bound by submitted race descriptions, we should strive for an even distribution of picks among preset races so that all of them are balanced.

Note that submission of race description is still important in two ways. One, the physiological description expands the variety of the preset races. Two, other social/psychological traits are reservoir for cool "pick" descriptions.

We can also use some other races submitted but not picked as preset races as minor NPC races (sentients but not starfaring).

After all this, before or after v1.0, we can also create a number of stock races that are not the 9 presets based on cool but unselected race description.

First, I think there must be a set number of main, preset races for FO. These races will be fully fleshed out in terms of art and given major story treatments. Having a reasonable number for preset races is IMHO the key to managing the workload.

What should be that number? I say the same number there is for Environmental Preferences, which is 9. This way, each preset race will have a unique most-favored EP.

I would leave the process more open-ended. Sure let's start with our 9 best ideas (probably including humans) and assign one to each EP. Lets do our best to ballance them so that each is distinct.

Then let do basicly the same thing for 9 indigene (non-technological) races. These would best be drawn from concepts that reasonably wouldn't be big players on the galactic scene if left to themselves.

Then we can move on to another group of 9, untill everyone is sick of it or there are no new ideas

I see no reason to start with "ignore the original race description." It will be neccesary to change some details to make things balance, or make races unique, but otherwise the description if it's good should be kept.

humanoids are strongly discouraged, humans with fur and an animal face doublely so.

That's your personal opinion and as such is strongly biased. It's in no way a general agreement.

Humanoids are just as fine as any other possible alien race.

While I admit freely I love that policy, I was actually posting Eleazar's opinions, not my own (as far as I can tell Eleazar seems to be the guy incharge of alien deisgn, or as close as we have). You can see them in this thread... Unless Eleazar changed his mind since then.

But since we know what humanoids look like, since they are like humans, we should encourage more original ideas.

What we should not do is discourage humanoids, just because we may think we know humans. That's my whole point.

Tortanick wrote:

as far as I can tell Eleazar seems to be the guy incharge of alien deisgn, or as close as we have

He is not, although he has done a nice job at summarizing the proposed races. Posting someone else's opinion(or the opinion you thing someone else has) can by problematic and should be avoided in general. If you have to do it - please give credit, because it will get confusing and messy otherwise, especially for people new to the project. Eleazar clearly stated his personal 'humble' opinion in this thread.

Last edited by pd on Tue Nov 20, 2007 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Posting someone else's opinion(or the opinion you thing someone else has) can by problematic and should be avoided in general. If you have to do it - please give credit, because it will get confusing and messy otherwise, especially for people new to the project.

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